The Dragon King's Human Mate
He had known what Flame Keepers were.
He had believed, as everyone believed, that they were gone.
"When did you stop believing that," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
"The night before you arrived," he said.
I went very still.
"The flame," I said.
"The flame burned differently," he said. "I have been watching that flame for three hundred years. I know every variation it is capable of. What it did that night was not a variation I had seen before." A pause. "It was not a variation I had read about anywhere except one place."